1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to downhole drilling for hydrocarbon reserves, and more particularly, to systems and methods for sharing information between downhole drill strings.
2. Background
The advantages of networking are well known in the computer and IT industries. By interconnecting multiple computers or devices, users of these devices may benefit from sharing information, applications, and resources. This, in turn, reduces costs, improves efficiency, provides redundancy, and the like. By networking various systems or devices together, the resulting network may provide a greater total benefit to teach user that these users could achieve working independently.
Despite the above-mentioned advantages of networks, many drilling operations still work in a relatively isolated manner. That is, although telemetry systems may be used to gather and analyze local downhole data at various drill sites, this data is rarely if ever available to operators at other drill sites. If the data is available, it may be inconvenient to access or the retrieval time may be too long to provide meaningful and timely benefit. The result is that drill sites are often unable to adequately access and capitalize on data gathered at other drill sites.
In some cases, a drilling operator on one lease or tract may be unable to adequately share and access information gathered by a drill string on another lease or tract. This is often true despite the fact that seismic measurements or geological properties such as porosity, permeability, density, resistivity, or other measurements gathered at one drill string may provide valuable to operators of another drill string. The result is waste and unnecessary expense due to the inability to share information and resources between drill strings.
In view of the foregoing what is needed is a system and method for sharing information between drill strings. Ideally, this information would be available in real time to allow drilling parameters of a drill string to be adjusted rapidly in response to data measured at another drill string. Further needed are systems and methods for archiving and providing access to data gathered by these drill strings over time.